A. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to X-ray imaging systems, and comprises a compact system that scans an X-ray film line by line and converts the resultant data into a form suitable for display on a video monitor under control of a standard personal computer.
B. Prior Art
X-ray images provide significant diagnostic information in the medical field. Typically such images have been viewed directly from the film with little additional change other than, perhaps, magnification. With the increasing availability of computational capabilities, such images are now more frequently being converted to digital images for subsequent display on a video monitor. This allows the application of image enhancement techniques to the original image, and can greatly improve the readability and usefulness of the image.
Typically, the digitized image is obtained by optically scanning the X-ray film by means of an imaging system comprising one or more lenses which project the image element-by-element onto a converter; the latter converts the light received from each element into an electrical signal that is stored for subsequent processing and display. Many such systems use scanning mirrors, multiply-folded optical paths, and the like to accomplish this. This increases the cost of such systems and, by increasing their complexity, also makes maintenance more difficult and more frequently needed.